that’s dangerous.”
“More than you think. It came in the same bottom that brought you to Nantucket so recently.”
“Come, tell me what it is.”
“The author is one Thomas Jefferson.”
“Read to me, Colonel. You have reason to believe that you are safe with me. Safe, safe, safe.”
“I know it. I know everything. You understand me.”
She nodded. He leafed through the little book. “Here’s some passable rhetoric,” he said, and he began to read, his voice becoming more and more powerful as he went on. “‘The common feelings of human nature must be surrendered up before his Majesty’s subjects here can be persuaded to believe that they hold their political existence at the will of a British Parliament. Shall these governments be dissolved, their property annihilated, and their people reduced to a state of nature, at the imperious breath of a body of men whom they never saw, in whom they never confided, and over whom they have no powers of punishment or removal, let their crimes against the American public be ever so great? Can any one reason be assigned why one hundred and sixty thousand electors in the island of Great Britain should give law to four millions in the States of America, every individual of whom is equal to every individual of them in virtue, in understanding, and in bodily strength? Were this to be admitted, instead of being a free people, as we have hitherto supposed and mean to continue ourselves, we should suddenly be found the slaves not of one but of one hundred and sixty thousand tyrants.’”
“I like that!” cried Madeleine. “Who is this flaming orator? Is he a friend of yours?”
“I don’t know the man.”
“Do you think he is in jail?”
“No; for I’ve been told that he is presently a delegate in Philadelphia. But you see now, do you not”—and he looked intently at her—“why my nephew and I must go.”
“I do, I do! What else does this delegate say?”
“Many wicked things—oh, if I were George the Third, I should not sleep easy until I did see Mr. Jefferson in fetters.” Mayhew was leafing again. “For example: ‘By an act passed in the fifth year of the reign of his late Majesty, King George the Second, an American subject is forbidden to make a hat for himself of the fur which he has taken, perhaps, on his own soil—an instance of despotism to which no parallel can be produced in the most arbitrary ages of British history.’”
But this time the Colonel failed to impress, for Madeleine burst out laughing. “Stop! Here I think your Mr. Henderson begins to foam at the mouth! What? Not to be allowed to make your own hat is a piece of brutality without parallel?”
“I shouldn’t have read you this passage. It is followed by a weightier one on the manufacture of iron. Wait. Here is one you must hear.”
“With pleasure. You read so beautifully!”
“Thank you. Let me boast that I sing in our choir on Sundays. But here it is. ‘The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was, unhappily, introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty’s negative, thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States and the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.’ Does this not touch you? ‘This infamous practice.’ Such words are quite beyond faction—we’ll say no more about the beaver hats.”
These words had in fact moved Madeleine more than the Colonel suspected. She asked him, softly: “Had you the opportunity, would you not engage in the slave trade yourself, Colonel Mayhew? It is so very profitable.”
The response was an indignant “I—in the slave trade? I would raise my tent in Muscovy or turn heathen before I’d handle a man like a bale of merchandise.”
At this, with the utmost gravity, she asked: “But is there not pleasure in being waited on by glistening black slaves?”
“Is this you speaking, Mademoiselle?” asked the Colonel, deeply grieved.
But she placed a reassuring hand on his arm.
“God forbid,” she said, and then she took a deep breath. “I was quoting your nephew.”
Mayhew lowered his head, and one of his hands went to his brow. Perhaps her words had not come to him as an overwhelming surprise.
“Can you not forgive what must have been a flip word or two?” he brought out, raising his head. “Nicholas has such splendid qualities. And I believe in my heart that you will not be sorry to—you will not be sorry.”
“I think I would be,” she said in a low voice. “And I came to the lighthouse just now, not by accident, but meaning to find you, and to give you this.”
She had taken her folded note from a satchel and now placed it in his hand.
“Please give him this for me. Please read it.”
He did so. And then he said, “Nicholas is one of best, Madeleine. A plain dealer and a gallant fighter. He lost father and mother when he was a boy. Perhaps he wants the softer counsels of a woman to complete him as a man. But he is generous, quick- witted, exuberant in imagination. We shall need men like him. They will be our especial glory.”
“Or your particular downfall.”
“No. It must not be, it must not be,” and he tried to return the note to her, but she refused with a gesture and quickly moved away.
14
THAT SAME AFTERNOON, Aimée saw to it that she would run into Nicholas. Minding what Madeleine had said to her, she naturally made no allusion to the marriage proposal. She only told him merrily that she was jealous of the excursion through the island he had offered her daughter, and that she desired one of her own, especially to the Eastern end of the island, where the view was said to be superb. Nicholas was happy to assent: not only was the Marquise excellent company, and most attractive simply as a woman, but he wanted to have her on his side when the moment came of Madeleine’s “sweet avowal,” namely by giving her, as he had given the girl, a large view of his prospects. He had reason to believe that the Marquise de Tourville was poor though noble—this was such a common occurrence!—and if that were the case, she might, in spite of her rank, snatch at the chance of an alliance with an affluent old American family. Ancient rank allied to new wealth: that too was a common occurrence. Besides, he would remind her that the Mayhews had been among the first to Christianize the Indian natives.
Of course, these dreams and intentions were shattered when he read Madeleine’s note, which the Colonel reluctantly handed him in the young man’s sitting-room, without saying a word.
“This is a disappointment, sir,” said Nicholas peevishly. “The young lady is prouder than I thought. But I do not give up so easily. Tomorrow I am spending the day, or a good part of it, with the mother, and I intend to attack again.”
The Colonel doubted that his nephew would succeed, but he kept that thought to himself, and only said, “If
